Help

 

Structure of the Archive


The DASI homepage provides information on the DASI archive, access to the CSAI corpus and a map to explore CSAI contents via their geographical distribution.
Links to related projects, such as textual corpora from the Arabian peninsula and other thematic portals, are also provided.
The upper menu bar provides access to the About, Help and Editorial criteria pages, providing an overview of the project, instructions on the browsing of the cards and use of indices and tools, and information on the editorial criteria followed in cataloguing, besides access to DASI API endpoint. The Reserved area in the upper section of the DASI homepage ensures admin functionalities to CSAI collaborators.

By entering the CSAI corpus, a thorough description of the main features of its documentation is provide, followed by a list of sub-corpora of inscriptions by ASA languages, script typology and current deposit. The menu in the left margin provide tools and indices that allow to browse or search the catalogued material.
The DASI website has been structured and the search tools and indices have been designed so that the extent of the search can be either broadened or narrowed on the basis of the level of the archive you have accessed. Therefore, you can either search the entire CSAI corpus by launching your search from the CSAI homepage, or limit your consultation to a single sub-corpus or collection inside CSAI.
 

INDEXES

 

TOOLS

 

RECORDS

Individual records of Epigraphs, Objects and Sites can be accesses starting from any index or tool - except the Bibliography index. Each record displays information specific to its category and links to the related records. The Epigraph records also host the transcription of the inscriptional text providing annotations for onomastic phenomena, and translations when available.
 
 

Corpora map


Clicking on the link Corpora map in the menu on the left, a page will appear that shows what the hierarchy of all the corpora of epigraphs you can access.
Note that the corpora gather the Epigraph cards according to selected features: for the moment, the Epigraphs are grouped on the basis of their language or of their script typology. Therefore, when you are consulting a corpus from this section, you will have no access to the an-epigraphic objects.
 
 

Collections map


Clicking on Collections’ map in the menu on the left, a page will appear that shows the hierarchy of all the collections of objects you can access.
Note that the collections specifically gather the Object cards of the epigraphic and an-epigraphic items catalogued by DASI in a number of museums worldwide, by virtue of the agreements for international cooperation
 
 

Epigraphs index


If you click on the link Epigraphs in the menu on the left, an index page of the titles of the epigraphs and their concordances will appear.

The list

The total number of epigraphs listed is indicated above the alphabet bar in this form: “NR titles, of which NR are actual epigraphs” (e.g: “9607 titles, of which 5861 are actual epigraphs”). The first number refers to all the epigraph titles plus their concordances, i.e. alternative titles, while the second refers only to the titles, i.e. it indicates the real number of different epigraph records which fit the criteria selected. You can distinguish the concordances in the list, because the main title of the epigraph is written between brackets at its side.
Structure of the list

The records are listed in alphabetical order by title.  You can select the initial letter from the alphabetic bar above. 30 records are listed in each page. In addition to the titles and concordances of the epigraphs, the list includes information on the language in which the inscription was written and thumbnail images. By clicking on a title or on one of its concordances, you will be taken to the apposite epigraph card.

Filters

Your search of the index of epigraphs can be refined by using one or more of the filters that you will find above the list; these will filter information regarding the epigraphs themselves, the objects on which they appear, or the sites to which they are linked (to learn more about the content of the filters, see Editorial criteria).
 
Every filter is provided with a text box, control box or dropdown menu, which you can type, select or choose the needed values. In the “Title” box you can insert special characters by means of the virtual keyboard, which can be displayed by clicking on the icon located at the side of the box.
 
When more than one filter is applied, the logic governing the selection will be ‘AND’. Therefore, if you apply various filters a list consisting only of those epigraphs that simultaneously meet all of the criteria will be generated.
 
Note that the number of epigraphs listed will vary depending on the level (a specific sub-corpus or collection) at which you are consulting the archive and that the filters applied must be consistent with that specific level and among themselves. E.g.: if you have accessed the Corpus of Qatabanic Inscriptions and you filter by Language-->Minaic, you will not retrieve any result.
 
 

Objects index


If you click on the link Objects in the menu on the left, an index page of the titles of the objects and their concordances will appear.
The archive contains mainly epigraphic objects, but the cataloguing of the South Arabian anepigraphic objects is in progress, beginning with those hosted in the museums which were partner of the projects of the University of Pisa (DASI, CASIS and MENCAWAR Projects).

The list

The total number of objects listed is indicated above the alphabet bar in this form: “NR titles, of which NR are actual objects” (e.g: “9607 titles, of which 5861 are actual objects”). The first number refers to all the object titles plus concordances (i.e. alternative titles), while the second refers only to the titles, i.e. it indicates the real number of different objects which fit the criteria selected. You can distinguish the concordances in the list, because the main title of the object is written between brackets at its side.

The records are listed in alphabetical order by title. You can select the initial letter from the alphabetic bar above. 30 records are listed in each page. In addition to the titles and concordances of the objects, the list includes information on the object  type and thumbnail images. By clicking on a title or on one of its concordances, you will be taken to the apposite object card.

Filters

Your search of the index of objects can be refined by using one or more of the filters that you will find above the list; these will filter information regarding the epigraphs inscribed on the objects, the objects themselves, or the sites to which they are linked (to learn more about the content of the filters, see Editorial criteria). Every filter is provided with a text box, control box or dropdown menu, which you can type, select or choose the needed values. In the “Title” box you can insert special characters by means of the virtual keyboard, which can be displayed by clicking on the icon located at the side of the box.
 
When more than one filter is applied, the logic governing the selection will be ‘AND’. Therefore, if you apply various filters a list consisting only of those objects that simultaneously meet all of the criteria will be generated.
 
Note that the number of objects listed will vary depending on the level (a specific sub-corpus or collection) at which you are consulting the archive and that the filters applied must be consistent with that specific level among themselves. E.g.: if you have accessed the Corpus of inscriptions from The British Museum and you filter by Settlement-->Aden and Institution-->The National Museum, you will not retrieve any result.
 
 

Sites index


If you click on the link Sites in the menu on the left, a list of the archaeological sites connected with the epigraphic and anepigraphic objects catalogued will appear, irrespective of whether their geographic coordinates are recorded or not (unlike the Map tool).

The list

The total number of sites listed is indicated above the alphabet bar.
The records are listed in alphabetical order by the name of the site. You can select the initial letter from the alphabetic bar above 30 records are listed in each page. In the index the modern name, the ancient name (when known), the region (when known), and the modern name of the country are specified. By clicking on the modern name of a site, you will be taken to the related card.

Filters

Your search of the index of sites can be refined by using one or more of the filters that you will find above the list; these will filter information regarding the epigraphs or the objects coming from the sites, or the sites themselves (to learn more about the content of the filters, see Editorial criteria). Every filter is provided with a text box, control box or dropdown menu, which you can type, select or choose the needed values. In the “Title” box you can insert special characters by means of the virtual keyboard, which can be displayed by clicking on the icon located at the side of the box.
 
When more than one filter is applied, the logic governing the selection will be ‘AND’. Therefore, if you apply various filters a list consisting only of those objects that simultaneously meet all of the criteria will be generated.
 
Note that the number of sites listed will vary depending on the level (specific corpora or collections) at which you are consulting the archive and that the filters applied must be consistent with that specific level and among themselves. E.g.: if you filter by Modern name-->Aden and Country-->Egypt, you will not retrieve any result.
 
 

Bibliography index


By clicking on the link Bibliography in the menu on the left you can access the bibliography of the resources that have been used in the DASI archive to catalogue the epigraphs, translations, objects and sites.

The list

The index is arranged in alphabetical order by author’s name and then by date. One column provides a complete bibliographic reference for each work cited.

Filters

Your search can be refined by filtering on the basis of an author’s name and/or the title of the work in question. The filters appear as boxes into which strings of text can be written.
 
When you access the index of bibliography and refine it, the number of references found will depend on the search level you have chosen – specific corpora or collections.
 
 
If you click on the link Textual search in the menu on the left, a page will open with prompts for the tools to conduct an advanced search for a specific word(s) or portion(s) of text in the inscriptions.

Search modalities

In the text box you can enter the text you are searching for by typing one or more strings of characters:
  1. Search for a word: write the word in the text box; choose the option Showing results as: word list; click on search.
  2. Search for textual portions: write the words in sequence with a space between each word; choose Showing results as: text portions; choose a value from the Word range dropdown menu (see below); then click on search. This search will retrieve the list of textual portions searched for, according to the range parameter you chose.
  3. Search for two or more words: this search function operates in the same way as (2) except that you must choose the option Showing results as: word list. This search will retrieve the results of the words searched for, displayed in separate alphabetical lists by their initial letter.
A bin icon allows to clear all research parameters, including text and filters.

Clitic and special characters

The clitic in the text is equivalent to a space, so if you type b ʾlmqh you will find the occurrences of the textual portion b ʾlmqh but also of b-ʾlmqh. Therefore, the hyphen sign must not be typed in the box.
Special characters – in particular letters with diacritic marks – can be inserted by means of the virtual panel that is displayed by clicking on the icon below the text box.
Wildcard *

The following examples show how you can search for words when the strings of characters that you have entered in the text box coincide with words. However, you can also search for all the words that begin with, end with, begin and end with, or contain a string of characters. To do this, we have provided a function using the wildcard *. Note that the search finds also words beginning, ending or containing lacunae. Note that the wildcard can be used also in the search for textual portions, combining the different cases; for example: s¹b* w *n.
The isolated wildcard (alone: *; or between spaces: byt * ywm) is equivalent to a word. Therefore, note that if you search for the wildcard * alone, you will retrieve all the words; if you apply some restrictions (see Filters), you will retrieve all the words that satisfy the criteria selected.

The order in which the strings of characters (in the case of two or more) is written is very important. The occurrences that will be identified will have as their first word the first string of characters, followed by the others. For example, if you search for gbʾw w (either as a word list or as a text portion) with the range 1, the results will include gbʾw w but not w gbʾw.

Word range

The word range is the maximum number of words that can intervene between the first word and the last word you are searching for (not counting the first word). Note that to find consistent results, the range number must be the same or higher than the number of spaces in the textual portion searched for. Some examples:
Filter by

You should note the function Filter by, which allows you to narrow your search to onomastics only or lexicon only. If you choose this option you cannot use the filters of the Onomastic categories, because you have already chosen to restrict your search to words or portions of text that are names (independently of their type: Onomastics only) or are not names (Lexicon only). The other filters can still be applied.

Note that if you open a new tab or a new window in the same browser by clicking on the Textual search button or on one of the Indexes from the left menu bar, and perform a search and/or apply filters, the search parameters and the filters will not influence the new search. For example, if in tab A you filter the textual search by Laguage-->Qatabanic, when you open a tab B and perform a new search with Language-->Hadramitic parameter, this parameter will not be applied to the search in the tab A.


Filters

The search for words or portions of text can be refined using one or more filters that will be applied to the meta-information encoded in the text of the inscriptions (Onomastic categories and Textual portions) or relative to the description of different features of the epigraphs (Language and script, Chronology, Textual typology, Sites, Objects, Decorations). For a more detailed description of the filters, see Editorial criteria.

The different types of filters are grouped into expandable sections (Onomastic categories, Textual portions, Language and Script, etc.); they follow the AND logic. For example, if you search for the string *nb* and select the filters male in the section Onomastic categories and Language-->Hadramitic in the Language and Script section, the search will retrieve only the words that are male names containing the pattern nb in inscriptions in Hadramitic language.

The sections, except for Onomastic categories, contain one or more menus from which you can select a filter. Also the menus of the same section follow the AND logic. For example, if you search for the pattern *nb* and – in the Language and Script section – select the filters Language-->Hadramitic and Writing technique-->Incision, the search will list only the words containing the pattern *nb* that occur inscriptions written in the Hadramitic language and incised. So taking into account the AND logic between the sections and the menus, in case you were searching for the pattern *nb* with filter male in the section Onomastic categories and the filters Language-->Hadramitic and Writing technique-->Incision in the section Languange and Script, the search would retrieve only the masculine names containing *nb*, found in inscriptions in Hadramitic language and incised.

In the section Onomastic categories, the filters are check boxes, and you can select one or more filters at the same time which are in a AND and/or OR relation: when selected horizontally, the filters follow the AND logic, when selected vertically, they follow the OR logic. Examples And so on.

Result list

The search function will generate a list of results identifying the inscriptions that contain the words or text portions of interest. The results are presented in a concise and legible manner that allows you to see the distribution of the words at a glance, to view the contexts in which they appear and then to access the inscription in few steps.
word language lexicon/onomastics occurence
rymm      
  Sabaic    
    lexicon 1
    Epithet of god, first position in compound name 1
    Epithet of god 123

By clicking on the link provided by the number of occurrences of a given word or portion of text, you can pass to a list of these occurrences.
In this list, the specific language of the inscription, its siglum in alphabetical order and the context within which the specific word or textual portion appears in each inscription are provided, according to this schema:
 
language epigraph context
Central Middle Sabaic CIAS 32.81/b 9 [... ... w-b Tʾlb] Rymm w-mnḍḥ-hmw bʿl
Central Middle Sabaic CIAS 34.51/o 6 hqny s²ym-hmw Tʾ4lb Rymm bʿl 5Ḥdṯnn ḏn ṣ6lmn

Thumbnails images of the epigraphs can be viewed by clicking on activate image preview just above the list of occurrences.
Once your search has generated a list of occurrences, by clicking on the siglum of the inscription, you can retrieve the catalogue entry for that inscription, in which you will see the word/textual portion highlighted in bold.

Order of the result list

The search results will be listed according to this alphabetical order, adopted throughout the archive:
a, ʾ, ʿ, b, c, d, ḏ, ḍ, e, f, g, ġ, h, ḫ, ḥ, I, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, s¹, s², s³, ṣ, t, ṯ, ṭ, u, v, w, x, y, z, ẓ.
The numerical order is: 1, 10, 11, 110, 111, 2, 20, 240, 3, 300, 33 and so on.

The difference between a search using the word list option and a search using text portion options will emerge clearly from the lists that are generated (see Search Modalities).

When you conduct a search by word list, all of the words corresponding to the individual strings of characters will be searched for within the limits of the word range you have selected. For example, if you are looking for the two strings s¹b* w with range 2, the list of results will include (among others) the following words (note: the DASI database is being constantly updated and therefore the number of occurrences will be accurate for the moment that this search was conducted): And so on.
 
When you are conducting a search using text portions, the entire portions of text that contain all of the strings specified in your search at the range defined in the search criteria will be listed. For example, if you are looking for the two strings s¹b* w at a range of 2, the list of results will include the following portions of text (the number of occurrences will be accurate for the time that the search was conducted): And so on.
 
It may be noted that the number of occurrences of a portion of text will be equal to the number of occurrences identified in a word list search of the first string of characters.
 
 

Word lists


Word lists, which can be accessed by clicking on the link in the menu on the left, is a study tool that allows you to retrieve the list of the words occurring in the inscriptions of the archive. These lists vary, depending on the level of the archive you have accessed.
 
Two separate lists are provided: The words are listed according to this schema: word, language, indication if the word is a noun or a name of a particular onomastic category and relative number of occurrences. By clicking on the link provided by the number of occurrences, you can pass to a list of these occurrences. In this list, the specific language of the inscription, its siglum in alphabetical order and the context within which the word appears in each inscription are provided.
 
Thumbnails images of the epigraphs can be viewed by clicking on activate image preview just above the list of occurrences.

By clicking on the siglum of the inscription, you can retrieve the catalogue entry for that inscription, in which you will see the word highlighted in bold.
The two lists are provided with a Filter words by ... function whose button is located just above the alphabet bar, which allows you to generate a list made up exclusively of names (Onomastics only) or words that are not names (Lexicon only).
 
Note: when you have selected Filter words by: Onomastics only, a page will appear with a list of further filters by onomastic category.
 
 

Map


Clicking on the link Map in the menu on the left, you can access a page containing a map which shows the sites where the objects/epigraphs in the archive were found or to which their origin can be traced. Only some of the sites recorded in the archive are marked on the map: the work of recording their coordinates in the database is still in progress.
 
If you pass the cursor over one of the sites, a cloud with its modern geographic name will appear. Click on the site and you will be taken to its Site card in the archive (see Sites)
 
 

Cards (Epigraphs, Objects, Sites)


The card is the page containing all the information that has been catalogued with regard to a specific item in the archive – be it an epigraph, an object or a site. The cards for a given category (e.g. an object as opposed to a site) will include information specific to that category (see Editorial criteria) but all of the catalogue cards are formatted in a similar manner.
 
Every card is characterized by:
Image gallery

By passing the cursor of the mouse over the image, a tool allows you to zoom in on specific parts. Beneath, information on the image will be given. To view the various images in the gallery, simply click on their thumbnails.

The images can be opened in a larger format using the slideshow modality: click on the selected image and then browse using the arrow command. A caption will be provided at the bottom of the image.

Expandable and reducible sections

Some of the sections are expandable and reducible: for example, the translation of an epigraph may be expanded with additional information, or pictures of the monuments at the archaeological site where it was found.

Text encoding

A unique aspect of this archive is that the cards for the epigraphs include the transcribed text of the inscription, where names and portions of text have been encoded. By clicking on a blinking marker you can visualize the names colour-coded for onomastic category or different portions of the text marked by icons at the beginning and the end. When this function is activated, passing the cursor of the mouse over the word or passage of interest will bring up a cloud identifying the type of name or the portion of the text .
To learn more about the text encoding, see the Editorial Criteria.
 
Record's details

Editor(s) / Revisor(s):
Note that the record is generically attributed to the "CSAI Team" when the specific editors of a record are not indicated in the database. This mainly concerns entries from the "CSAI - Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions" initiative, carried out at the University of Pisa between 2001 and 2012, which were integrated into the newly developed DASI system in 2013. 

Publication date(s): 
Note that records are conventionally dated to "2013-10-01" in the case they were integrated into DASI from the earlier "CSAI - Corpus of South Arabian Inscriptions". This editorial initiative, which did not record the date of the entry's first publication online, was conducted at the University of Pisa from 2001 to 2012. 
The "Latest update" refers to the date of the last major change made to the record’s edition (e.g., modifications to the text reading, metadata, etc. - not minor corrections such as typos).